Water You Doing?
by Collaboration for Destruction
Summary: Axel tricks Roxas into going to a water park. They end up in hell. Chapter 6 - Hello, My Name is The Devil. Rated T for expletives and death.
1. In Hell It's Always Twilight

Chapter 1 – In Hell It's Always Twilight

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

I had that dream again.

I don't know what it means. All it is is the steady dripping of water, like a leaky faucet. _Drip, drip, drip._

I woke up screaming, not knowing why. Why am I so afraid? Why is a drop of water so terrifying? Maybe it's because of _that_.

I woke up when the day was ending, at twilight, the same hour I had gone to sleep. Had I really wasted an entire day? I looked around the room, and saw the twinkling stars that decorate every available space. I've never seen a real star before. I guess I've just never stayed up late enough.

I looked around my room again and was surprised when _you_ appeared beside my bed. You looked down at me with a strange look in your eye, staring. "Yo, Roxas," you said. I looked back at you, wondering what it was you wanted, how you managed to get into my house without a key.

"How did you get in my room?" I asked. In response you lifted your arm and showed me the keyblade you held in your hand, and I understood. You put it back down, and looked at me again. Then you put your hand in your coat pocket and pulled out two strips of red paper.

"Yo man, I totally got us tickets to six flags," you said innocently, smiling.

"Really? Aw man, that's awesome, I love roller coasters," I said, grabbing one of the strips out of your hand. It was an admission wristband. "Do you expect me to pay you back, because I don't have any munny."

"That's okay, I'm sure the old lady still has some bees in her yard," you said.

"Gee man, I'm so happy, but isn't it a little late in the day?"

You glanced out the window at the rigidly immobile sun. "Nah, there's plenty of sunlight left." You said.

"I dunno', it looks like it's setting," I said.

"That's even better," you said, "don't you know six flags does awesome shit when it's dark?"

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like glowsticks and porky pig and fireworks and enchiladas," you paused and glanced around the room, "and stars…"

"Wow! I love stars! I'd really like to see one one day!" I replied.

"Uh, you don't see them in the day," you said.

"Every night I wait up as long as I can, hoping it'll get dark and the stars'll come out, but I always fall asleep before I see them."

Then we sorta just sat there in the room for a few minutes.

"Dude it's hot in here, don't you have a fucking fan?" you said.

"Yeah, you're holding it. You tore the spinnies out to use as a weapon."

"Fuck."

"Are we gonna' go to 6 flags now?"

"Yeah, get in my car. It's outside," you said. Then, without asking, you went into my fridge and took my bottle of grape soda.

"We're not gonna take the train?" I asked.

"Hell no, that thing doesn't leave this town. It just goes in a fucking circle forever, and there isn't anyone driving it," you said, drinking my grape soda straight out of the bottle.

"Hey, I was saving that for a special occasion," I said.

"Like when, when you finally see the fucking stars? Like that's gonna happen," you said. You finished the bottle and threw it across the room, the few drops of soda left spilling on my carpet. "Six flags, now."

We got in your car and it was a long, slow ride to six flags. We were good friends, but not enough to have a 6 hour conversation so during the first 20 of the trip I kept thinking about how the hell we would keep talking or how it would fade out. Thankfully, it finally started to fade out, but I painfully tried to maintain it so I wouldn't seem the awkward silence. You kept trying to turn the music on to avoid talking, but I really hate Metallica, so I kept turning it off.

"Stop getting trigger happy on the radio."

"I don't wanna' listen to this."

"So, you wanna' talk about something interesting?"

"Sure. What coaster do you wanna' go on first?"

"Oh, I dunno', I sorta' wanna' go to the water park."

"What? Fuck man, no, I thought you needed separate tickets or some shit—"

"No man you climb the fucking fence in the tiger exhibit to get in."

"I don't wanna' do that shit—can't we go on the damn coasters and I didn't bring a fucking swimsuit, I bet you wore one under your clothes and didn't say shit about what you were planning to do like the time we were gonna' go to Disney Land, but it was closed, so we went to the beach, and you pulled out this like beach umbrella from your trunk and a cooler full of snacks and shit and I was like 'a brother don't just carry that crap around everywhere he goes, plus I know you stopped to get ice for that cooler when we stopped at the 7 eleven because you said you needed to use the bathroom. I was wondering why you opened your trunk.' Or the time you was like 'come on over to my house and bake some cookies,' and I was like, 'why, it's 3 in the morning' and you were like, 'just come over here,' and then I was like, 'okay you woke me up, where's the Pillsbury,' and you were like, 'shit I don't have it, let's go to the beach.'"

"God, shut the fuck up. We cool, we cool, we'll go to the coasters. Fuckin' Kingda Ka man, that looks like the shit."

So, satisfied, I stopped arguing, which unfortunately meant that we didn't exchange another word for the rest of the trip. I played Manslaughter Prostitute Taxi Driver Wrestlemania 3 on my PSP for five hours and you kept putting Metallica on, and eventually I gave up on turning it off. I hate Metallica so much, seriously.

When we finally arrived, we put our wristbands on and went through the gate. We found a map and argued about where we would put our things.

"I am not paying for you to put your shit in a locker when you could have left it in the car," you said.

I stared up at the sky. Damn it was hot. God damn I wanted to stop sweating, but I couldn't. It was twilight, so it should be getting dark soon. I concentrated on the map, looking for which ride I wanted to go on first. We chose the Superman, which I had heard good things about. We found it and waited on the line for an hour, at which point you started to get bored.

"We haven't been on one ride yet and it's been a fucking hour, let's ditch this shit," you said, leaning over the gate and watching the cars go by.

"Don't worry, we're almost at the end," I said, excited to finally experience the fourteen second long ride.

"No way man, I'm going to the waterpark," you said, and you grabbed my arm and started dragging me away from the line.

"No way man, I thought we agreed we weren't going—"

"Waterpark."

"I'm gonna' stay on this line."

"Fine, bye. I'm going on the Whale Launcher," and you took your clothes off, standing in your swim trunks, and handed them to me.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" I yelled after you as you walked away.

"Put it in the car or something."

"I can't leave the park or I'll have to get one of those gay stamps on my hand, which will make me look like a little kid and it'll give me cancer." You continued to walk away and I was left standing alone on a line in the sun in 6 flags, pissed off and lonely and I just stepped in ice cream. Fuck. I love these shoes. I bought these laces from a specialty shop and I just got them shined by a homeless guy like two days ago.

So with no other options I got off the line and went to a rest area. I put your stuff on a bench and ordered myself some Dippin' Dots, but I didn't have the 23 munny it cost. I was so pissed off at you that I reached into your coat pocket and rifled around for your wallet. I pulled out all of your money and paid for my ice cream, and kept the rest of it too because I blamed you for my ruined shoes. There I was, finally in a theme park, surrounded by images of fun, and the damn cartoon character designed cup they gave me my ice cream in exaggerated the state I was in now. It would be better to be alone in my smelly apartment than in this damn theme park, playing video games in the dark. But, trapped by my own pressure to be happy, I ensured that I spent the entire evening here in misery. I saw some damnass kid with a goofy hat and I was like, "huh, I kinda' want that. That'll make me happy." So I went to the gift shop, but it was 64 munny, but I couldn't afford that even with your money. So, feeling crummy about myself, I went to the best place to feel crummy about yourself—the food court.

I spotted a giant plastic building all divided up inside with a pink plastic princess castle sections with tea cups to sit in, except the plastic was all dirtied up by spilled food and infant vomit. It was even hotter in there than outside with the fry-saturated hot air steaming up from the back and mixing with the sweat of obese people to hang humid in the air. I stood on line for about 20 minutes before giving up and sat down in a table with only a few fries and a ketchup smeared napkin I found on the floor. Behind me a kid screamed and as I heard the screaming and smelt the stink I looked up at this big ironic plastic statue of bugs bunny smiling at me. What the fuck you smiling at? I thought. Maybe he thought it was some damn joke. I looked away, loathe to see the artificial happiness this disgusting place was trying to create, and realized I left your coat on the bench outside. I was still really pissed at you, so I left it there, enjoying my greasy, soggy French fries as much as was possible. It wasn't possible, though because they tasted like floor, so I turned around again and gave them to the screaming kid. I left the food court before his mother could yell at me for feeding her kid dirty fries, and went to finish my Dippin' Dots outside. By then, however, they had melted into a colorful goop that tasted like failure.

Finally I gave up and decided I'd go to the fuckin' waterpark. Checking the map first, I followed your advice and went to go jump the fence. I conceded.

I saw you stepping out of the log flume, and you slapped me on the back with a big wet hand, and I winced as the water soaked through the whole damn back of my shirt. "We're going on the Whale Launcher! Yeah bro, this is freakin awesome!" you screamed as you climbed the side of the ride, while the attendants yelled below. Unlike the lines for the coasters, this one seemed to go so quickly. The car pulled up and you shouted, "hell yeah, let's get on the first car! Then we can get soaked!" The seat already was soaking wet and the whale face painted on the car dumbly smirked at me in mockery. I spent the next three hours getting the clothes I could not change out of for the next twelve hours totally soaked until I had to keep pulling them back up because they were so heavy with water.

"Are we done here yet?" I asked, hoping you'd be sick of the place by now.

"Hell no, we're not leaving till it closes," you said, to my great dismay.

"When does it close?" I asked.

"Once it gets dark," you said.

"Well, what time is it now?"

"Probably about twilight," you said. You looked around for a minute, then asked "hey, where'd you end up putting my stuff?"

Oh shit, I thought. "Uh, so uh, hey man, I totally left everything you own in the other park."

"God damn now I gotta' go to lost and found."

Lost and found was a dirty concrete building on the edge of the park with a damp, sticky waiting room inside that smelled like pool for some reason. The woman sitting behind the desk glared at us like we were the stupidest things she ever saw.

"Okay, so I lost—"

"Yeah, I know you lost, you gotta' fill out the damn form, you 'spect me to find it for you? Fill this out then go sit down o'er there."

I was handed a large stack of forms with Disney characters on them waving to me with a speech bubble saying, "I'm so sorry you lost something while at 6 flags! We assure you we keep the best of records and wish you well on your search to find whatever you lost! Please check each applicable box so we can assist you! This is for . The next form you need to fill out is ."

I looked in your direction, hoping you would help me fill out these ridiculous forms, especially because the missing items were yours. But you were gone, and you didn't return until I had finished the forms. You came back dripping wet, again, as if you had gone back to the water park while you waited for me.

"I went to the water park while I was waiting for you," you said.

"What the hell man why didn't you help me fill the forms for _your_ missing shit?" I yelled.

"Uh duh, you lost it. Where's my stuff, by the way?"

"I've been waiting for it for hours and they haven't given me anything. They didn't even accept the forms because I filled one of the bubbles in wrong, so now I have to do it all again."

And when you leaned over to look at the forms, sure enough you dripped water all over the stack of papers I had already filled out. The entire stack ruined, I had to throw them out and ask for another copy. "There's a two copy limit per person, if you want another one you hafta fill out form F4492829D78392034847," the woman behind the counter told me, at which point I gave up and left the lost and found office.

"Dude, you didn't get my shit back," you complained.

"Whatever, you can replace it."

"My fuckin' car keys are in my pocket, how are we supposed to leave without those?"

"We'll use the key blade. Can we just go home already, I hate it here."

"Did the star show happen yet?"

"No, it's not dark yet."

"Fuck. Let's go to the water park."

"NO, god damn, we're leaving."

"Oh look, my jacket."

So, the car keys recovered, we finally left the park and got in the car to go home. I was starting to get really tired, which was upsetting because I can never stay awake before it gets completely dark. On top of that my clothes were completely soaked, and the air conditioner was broken so it couldn't be turned off, so I was stuck in the car freezing my ass off for six more hours. I was angry the entire ride, feeling the seat squishing up against my horrible soaking clothes and the six flags bus theme playing ironically on the radio. As soon as I got home I changed into my dry clothes and fell asleep at twilight.


	2. YAR YAR YAR YAR

Chapter 2 – YAR YAR YAR YAR

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

I had that dream again.

Woken up again at twilight, surprised that I'm capable of sleeping for twenty four hours every day. Wait, isn't a day twenty four hours long? Fuck that, I'm gonna go play video games. I took out my PSP and turned it on, not bothering to get out of bed or check what game was in the system. The title screen popped up, revealing itself to be Warmonger 5. I chose my save file and ran around in game for a while, killing off civilians so I wouldn't have to advance the plot. I ran out of bullets after a while so I started pushing people off of cliffs. I did this for about twenty minutes until I heard a knock on my door.

"Who is it?" I yelled, but I couldn't hear what was being said on the other side of the door so I got up and opened it. You were standing there, holding two ticket stubs.

"I got tickets to another park," you said, grinning.

"I'm not going, I'm playing video games."

In response you pulled a bottle of soda out of your pocket and poured the contents onto my PSP, which was still in my hands. "No you're not."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I screamed, furious. I threw the PSP onto the floor and wiped my sticky hands off on my shirt. "You don't break my stuff because I don't wanna go with you to a water park!"

"It's not a water park," you said, still grinning.

"Oh yeah?" I asked, suspicious. "What's it called?"

"Hurricane Harbor…I swear to god it's not a water park."

"Then why's it called 'Hurricane?'"

"'Cause the rides go really really fast. Come on, the days almost over, we gotta leave now."

With no PSP to entertain me, I had two options: sit and stare at the wall, or go to the theme park with you.

"Wait—before we go. Prove you don't got your swimming trunks on," I said.

"Look man, just boxers! Just boxers….with little stars on them!" He laughed. I threw the nearest shit at him, which happened to be a box of Cheez-its. Dammit, that was my dinner. Now it was all over the floor, and I'd have to clean it up later.

"Hahaha you threw your own Cheez-its. Come on let's get in the car."

Not wanting to clean my room just yet, I decided I would be willing to go. So we got in his car and started another long hour trip. You asked me what game I was playing before you showed up, and I told you it was that new version of Warmonger that just came out.

"Oh yeah, this is the one where you can like enslave the villagers right?"

"Yeah, I got a whole village building me a monument right now. I use them for target practice sometimes."

"Yo, you gotta lend me that shit later."

"Dude, I gotta' tell you this awesome glitch. So like when you go to shoot at people, they start running from you. So what you do is you have the slaves build like a fence and buildings and shit all around the side of a cliff so when you start shooting at them they can only run off the cliff. It's hilarious. Especially when you swing the camera angle over and you can watch them fall—hey yo why you pulling over to that Wal-Mart?"

"I gotta get somethin', I gotta get somethin'," you said, and abruptly ran out of the car and into the store. I would have followed you because I wanted to get some more Cheez-its, but I didn't wanna get lost because that store was freaking huge. Anyway I found some in the glove compartment along with some mints and an M&M's wrapper with an image from some movie that came out four years ago. I took the Cheez-its and started screwing around with your radio and left it on a Linkin Park song, knowing that if you knew Linkin Park was playing in your car, you'd have to get a new one. My fingers were covered in orange Cheez-it dust and I think it got wiped off in your CD player.

Unfortunately you didn't return until the song was over and by the time you got back you had no idea I had ruined your car for eternity. Blissfully unaware of my betrayal, you turned the radio off and tried to play the CD that was already in the player, but it wouldn't start.

"Did you touch my CD's with your dirty Cheez-it fingers?"

"No," I lied. "Wait, why don't you have any bags with you?"

"I didn't buy anything."

"Then why'd we stop here?"

"I had to go to the bathroom."

"There was a 7-11 like two miles back, it'd be way easier to stop there."

"7-11 doesn't have a bathroom."

"Yeah it does."

"What the fuck do you know? What, you got some kinda phD in 7-11's? You write your dissertation on 7 fucking 11? Shutup."

That was all we said for 12 hours. You pulled into the parking lot of Hurricane Harbor and picked a spot close to the entrance.

"How did you know I had been eating Cheez-its?" I asked.

"What?"

"Twelve hours ago."

"You slow man, you really slow."

"I finished those before you got back."

"Man I saw you wiping that nasty orange shit off on your pants like some kinda slob." You looked into the park and grinned widely. "I know something that'll wash that right off."

I was about to respond to that highly suspicious statement but was distracted by the entrance sign of the theme park we were about to enter. Despite having been told it was not a water park, the sign was decorated in an aquatic theme that indicated quite strongly that the park was not entirely hydrophobic. There was a picture of a huge tidal wave destroying the word "Hurricane", which led me to believe that your claim that the word was not related to water was a lie.

"Damnit, Axel, this is exactly like that time when you called me up and was all like 'wanna go to the zoo' and I was like 'yeah man let's look at the water buffalo' and when we drove there we went to the aquarium instead and I said 'man there ain't no buffalo here' and you're all 'you said you wanted to see water buffalo' and I'm like 'dumbass water buffalo live on land', and you _knew_ water buffalo didn't live underwater, you just wanted to go to the aquarium because you like coral, ya boring asshole. So I sat in the damn food court until twilight waiting for you to finish looking at something that doesn't even move. I mean shit, you got coral on yo shower curtains and it doesn't do any more than real coral. Then you come all a runnin' at me saying, 'get back to the car, get back to the car,' and I'm like 'damn, this is a dream come true, you gotta' have done some weird shit,' and when we got back inna' the car you start pulling shit out of your pockets like starfish from the live touch exhibit."

"Haha, _star_fish," you said, mocking my one true desire.

"I am not going in there," I said, turning around to go wait in the car.

"Yeah you are," you said, and led me by the arm through the front gate.

"I hate water parks, I'm seriously not going."

"What you wanna wait in the fucking car until dark, 'cuse I ain't leavin' til the park closes."

At that I felt it would be best to follow him, thinking maybe it'd be more fun than just sitting alone in a car for hours. Plus it was like 97 degrees. I once left a toad in a Poland Spring bottle in a car at 97 degrees. It fuckin' melted. That was my first pet.

So we started towards the park, with me once again unprepared for water rides. You, on the other hand, took your clothes off and underneath was a pair of swim trunks.

"So that's what you was doin' at Wal-Mart," I said.

"No," you said.

"Then how'd you get those when before you were wearing underwear?"

"Iunno."

"I still see the tag on it," I said.

You covered the tag with your hand to try and hide it and pulled it off. "Now you don't."

"I am not going on any of those rides."

"Fuck you."

"No, fuck you."

Without responding to me you dumped your coat into my arms again and ran off to the Pirate Leg Flume. Not yet inside the park, I walked back to the car and noticed that you neglected to finish closing the window. I tried to stuff your coat in through the crack but it was too thick and it ended up just hanging out shoved halfway through. While I was pulling it back out the alarm went off, and I ran away from it as fast as possible and took refuge in the water park so as to avoid looking like a car thief.

Despite the 97 degree weather you were wearing a huge leather coat and carrying it around was annoying, so I went to the lost and found office and left it in the box so it wouldn't get stolen. Unlike Six Flags, this lost and found was just a concrete wall with a wooden box with the words "LOST ND FOUND" painted on the side. I trusted the coat to stay put because the box had a lid. Then I went to go hang out in the food court.

There was a different set of characters here—not so much a Disney-ish setting, but as a sea-themed, pirate one with anchors on the wall and jolly hooked fish. I don't understand why people always like to draw happy faces on pictures of tuna on cans or cows on meat packages, like they havin' fun? Damn, the only damn thing on the menu was fish. I hate pretty much anything that isn't ice cream, and I tried to order a slushy to be safe, only to find out it was made of all the unused fishsticks blended up with some sugar and ice. I was sitting at one of the plastic tables meant to look like wood and the sound of seagulls was playing on an audio, except an actual bird, hearing the sound, mistook it for another bird and charged into it to his death, causing the audio to play that screech over and over and over. Suddenly I noticed an interesting character that seemed out of place. It was Jiminy Cricket. I walked over to him and said, "hey, aren't you supposed to be in Disney Land?"

"I got fired," he said morosely.

"Then why are you still wearing your costume?"

"What costume?" he screamed. I stared at him for a little in silence, or whatever was close to "silence" in that food court, and he repeated, "WHAT COSTUME?" and then ran away crying violently. I watched him run away, confused and nauseous. Once he was gone I threw away my fishstick slushy and left without paying because I forgot to take your money before I dropped your coat off at the lost and found.

Suddenly I saw you running toward me and I thought two things. One, holy shit, I didn't get wet. Two, you did something again. You started shouting, "we gotta' get outta' here, we gotta' get outta here!"

You grabbed my arm and started dragging me back to the car. You shouted "If the cops ask you about Red Bird Fire you say 'yes'!"

We couldn't get into the car because all of the doors were locked so I ran up to the nearest pirate mascot. "Yar, I'm Pirate Peeleg #42, you wanna' be taking a picture?" he said.

"No, but I'll take this," I said as I leaned in to grab his peg leg.

"Yar, whatta' you be doing, YAR YAR YAR YAR!" he said in distress. After great difficulty I managed to pull his leg off while he flapped his stuffed costume arms helplessly about him like a horrible sea monster. I tried prying the window open with the leg but without turning the car on it wouldn't budge, so I smashed the window open. Plastic shards flew everywhere and got all over the driver's seat.

"Get in, get in! How do you hotwire a car?" you yelled.

"Get something that fits in the ignition!"

We looked around the car for something to shove in the ignition, and eventually we found a window shard that fit perfectly. We started the car and drove away as fast as the car would go, barely missing an old lady as we left the parking lot.

Finally we drove at a steady cruise and I began to relax, thinking how great it was to be sitting in a dry seat. I thought about video game murder and explosions and when I got bored I started feeling sentimental about the sunset and watched it for the rest of the ride. After the eleventh hour the sky started to get a little cloudy, and for a second I thought I had finally stayed up long enough to see the sun go down. But it wasn't quite night yet; you let me out of the car ten blocks away from my house because you needed to dispose of something at the dump, and before I had walked two feet it started to rain. By the time I got home I was soaked, and at that exact moment the clouds cleared and it stopped raining. You're an asshole. Well at least I could view the beautiful twilight as I fell asleep.


	3. The Ghost Hole

Chapter 3 – The Ghost Hole

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

I had that dream again.

My eyes cracked open at the dawn of twilight. The sweet orange color of sunset woke me up after a long night's sleep. Dammit, I slept 'til twilight again. But this wasn't the first thing that was on my mind. As I came into a half slumber I saw the gleam of metal in front of my face. My mind didn't give me thoughts about this immediately and they only came into my consciousness later. There were little tiny holes everywhere on this metal. And they seemed so big. Yes, this metal device was close to my face. My shock woke me up faster than usual. And could it be, a little stream of light came out of one of the holes. It was….water reflecting light. What was this? Then I smelled dirty cheetos, like on the hand of someone who eats like shit and never bathes.

"Good morning." I heard your voice.

A powerful stream of water burst forth from the holes and hit me directly in the face. I felt like I was drowning, I felt terror like I had never felt before. Millions, billions, countless tiny holes all blasting their own individual stream, all unified into a single torrent of terror. The assault eventually ended and all I could see was you, staring down at me like a kid having fun poking a lizard with a stick.

"Aw, you feelin' upset?" you said. Your face sickens me. Your hair color was so fake. It looked like you bought the dye at Ricky's and did it in an overly-graffitied bathroom at a death metal concert in the sink usually used for drug disposal or vomiting. I could never say these things to you. But I thought them….so much. Just then you reached your cheeto smeared fingers out and wiped them all along the front of my star pajamas."

"Hey man, why you _do_ that!" I screamed.

"Cause your shirt was wet and I needed to wash this off. Besides, the orange stripes work with your star shirt. Now they're shooting stars. See they got little orange trails."

"What the hell, just put your fingers under the sink."

"I can't do that," you said.

"Why not?"

"Cause the sink is all the way in the kitchen. I don't wanna get water all over the floor. Man, everyone knows you never turn the faucet on when it's not over the basin."

"But you just freaking did! Also how the hell did you take the extended faucet all the way into my bedroom? It doesn't pull more than two feet."

"I pulled it. But this part isn't very bendy." You pointed to a giant rusted pipe significantly larger in diameter than the flexi-sink extension, which was only two feet long.

"Dude…that is seriously the wall pipe," I said, marveling at how you could possibly have dismantled my kitchen so thoroughly. "How did you get that out of the wall."

"I dunno."

"But you did it, shouldn't you know how it happened? I mean, physics man…the laws of physics."

"Fuck the law."

"But dude that's not like the police, you don't have a choice but to obey-" You cut me off.

"Dude—you just called it a law. If it's a law, I fuck it."

"But…"

"Law, right?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck the law." Then you opened another bag of cheetos and poured it into a milk carton and started drinking it. "This is better than cereal" you said. "It's part of my daily diet that calls for an infinite serving of doing whatever the hell I want."

It didn't take me very long to realize that that was my milk carton you were drinking directly out of. I recognize it because it has the missing person label on the side – 'Missing: Everyone. Please report to: Someone. Address: Twilight Town.' I was furious. "Why you gotta always be going in my fridge, every single time you come over here you open something I haven't even used yet and you put your mouth on it!"

"That's why I open it, because you don't use it," you said, taking a long sip from my 2% milk. Your eyes widen as something dawns on you. "Oh, speaking of which, I broke your fridge while I was breaking your wall. It's really bad."

"Holy crap, yeah…"

"I know, my spinny was lodged in the wall and it won't come out."

I ran into the kitchen looking to see what damage had been done. You really did it this time. There was a gigantic hole in the wall that looked into pipes with a giant space where the pipe was removed.

"Oh sh—I gotta call the landlord!"

"There is no landlord. There is no one."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Leave." Then you began to walk out. "You wanna come with me, I was gonna go out and look for an apartment. I do that every twilight for the past 10 years. Still haven't found a place."

"You know, I've been wondering where you live for a while."

"Shit man, I don't live nowhere, I just travel through the walls through those space-teleporty void things." You look at me with an impatient scowl and pick up a cake fork you see lying on the floor in front of the giant gaping hole in the wall. Sparks fly out of the hole and onto the floor from where you dismantled an electrical socket. "Floor's kinda messy," you say, placing the fork on the counter. "Come on, let's be roommates. I do the dishes. You're not gonna find another roommate who would do your dishes. In fact, you're not gonna find another roommate."

"Well, I guess I have no other options," I said and followed him out the door. We were wandering around for a few hours when suddenly I saw a shadow swish. It was a very lumpus shape. The setting sun made it stretch all the way down the cobblestone alley in a frightening way.

"Axel, what's that. I think there's a guy standing there outside that building sweeping."

As we approached the figure seemed to notice, but pretended not to, sweeping methodically in front of the building. He was balding and had hair only on the sides of his head, but it was unusually horizontally protruding. It seemed to be of a light orange color, just like the sunset. His nose was unusually round, as was his stomach, which pushed unpleasantly like a giant round ball from underneath his white undershirt in a way that said "I don't give a fuck."

I hesitated for a moment, but was propelled forward by you pushing me directly in front of this mysterious figure. "Yo, maybe he's the super or some shit," you said, in reference to the apartment building he stood before. "Ask him if he's got rooms open."

I walked up closer, so that I could have a good look at the apartment building. A wooden sign hung above the entrance. It was very worn down and had white paint writing that read "The Ghost Hole." The building didn't seem to have a number.

I approached him while you played paddleball. "E-excuse me."

The sweeping figure ceased, hovering above his broom with his face still looking down in an extremely dramatic and anticipatory fashion. Then suddenly it jerked up, revealing a face entirely painted like a clowns' with a big bright red nose.

"Hello, are you…" I began.

"An evil murder clown? Yes."

"No, I meant a superintendent?"

"What is?"

"It's the owner of a building who holds the keys to all rooms and gives renters a copy so that they can sleep peacefully in their beds lending all trust to the superintendent…who also has a key to the rooms and could easily enter them at any moment."

"Yes. I am this. I also give parties for children. Currently, we have open room."

"Fuckin' A. Which rooms?"

"All."

"Wow, that's pretty lucky. Hey Axel, come here, all the rooms are open!"

You shambled over. "How much is the rent?" You asked.

"Your life…savings."

"Dude, that's really expensive, but only for the first month. What is that sign up there? 'Ghost hole'? What the hell does that mean?"

"Ivan the Evil Murder Clown does not turn the radiators on until January. Bua. Ha. Ha."

"Well, that's cool man…" then I paused. "Haha, I just realized that that makes sense literally. Get it, cool, 'cause it's cold in January…haha…get it?"

Ivan looked at me gravely.

"Ivan only laughs at murder," he said.

"But you were just laughing about the radiator."

Ivan paused, thinking hard, and was surprised that he had to think so hard.

"Well that is because it was unpleasantness, which is mildly amusing, but murder is much funnier."

"Ok, so when can we get our keys?"

"Excuse me," Ivan said. He lay the broom down and shambled over to the sign that said 'The Ghost Hole.' He took it off the door post, broke it in half and then went behind the apartment building. In a few minutes he came back with a new wooden sign, which was new only relatively speaking, because it was also rotten and old. He then sat down on a hideous, cracked, yellow waiting room chair he had sitting outside the apartment building. There were stains of brown rings on it and cotton coming out. He dragged a white paint can up to him and began painting the words 'The Ghost Hole' on the sign.

I just stood there awhile. After about 15 minutes he was done and posted the sign up in the same place as the other one. It looked exactly the same.

"Go inside. You don't need key. Rooms are upstairs."

I walked inside and I was overcome by a musky, moldy smell. I felt an instant cold, damp breeze in there and it was very dark. The walls were pure concrete without any coloration on them at all and random words were painted on the sides in white paint. 'The Ghost Hole' was written over and over. Some of the writing was indiscernible, but one could still tell the tone, which was mad. Some of the other writing said 'Ivan loves a good party,' 'get out of my living room,' and 'the number 10,000 is amazing.' There were several rooms on the sides with molding, peeling wallpaper with stains of long removed frames. The wall paper was shades of pink and yellow, sometimes with little balloons or flowers, sort of like a children's nursery. There were balloons of all colors sitting silently on the tops of the ceiling. A destroyed teddy bear, some 'punch-me clowns', and other various play things lay around. But mostly in all these rooms were hundreds upon hundreds of broken wooden signs piled up on top of each other, that all said 'The Ghost Hole.'

"This sucks."


	4. Party Time

Chapter 5 – Party Time

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

I had that dream again.

Except that it was a daydream this time. I walked all the way upstairs and stepped into the first open door into a room devoid of furniture. The walls were a faint, pastel paper just like the ones downstairs. In the far corner of the room was a small embroidered pillow, like the kind that says "home sweet home" with pink lace on it. I quickly forgot about this, though, when I noticed the television sitting in the middle of the room with a full video game console set up.

'Holy shit,' I thought, 'he has BloodThUrZt Mechavision 3D.' I settled down to play and turned the volume up as loud as I could, preparing to do what I love most in video games—not advance the plot at all but instead kill the citizens. Despite the high volume, I heard some noise from downstairs. It was a little hissing mixed with the sound of maracas. Someone downstairs was playing salsa music and blowing up helium balloons. Whatever.

A giant wormhole opened in the middle of the room. You stepped out.

"Hey man, I thought you got your own room," I said to you.

"Dude there aren't any other rooms. I looked. They all had piles of these wooden signs in them that said 'the ghost hole'."

"Ah yeah…" I said in that totally not paying attention kinda way. I was playing video games.

"Hey, is that the game I think it is," you said, and instantly plugged in the second controller so that the game restart itself right before I reached the save point.

"FUUUUUCK!" I screamed. "I was just about to set a record!"

"No, I was," you said, loading my game file and then completing what I had failed to complete, thereby claiming victory after banking on all my progress.

I got tired so I looked for a bed. "Hey Axel, there's no bed in here," I said, after giving the room a thorough survey. "Unless it's really tiny." Then I got hungry.

"I wonder if this room has any Cheez-its," I said as I made my way to the closet. There was only one closet in the room, hiding inconspicuously in a dark corner with chipped wallpaper and warped floorboards surrounding the door. All over the wooden paneling were scratch marks and splashes of something red, as if someone had been trying really, really hard to get inside of it. "Oh cool, Kool-Aid stains. This must be a pantry. I always spill Kool-Aid on my pantry door."

I grabbed the knob and turned it, only to discover and intricate lock mechanism sealed it tightly. It was easily bypassed by my keyblade, of course. The door creaked open like the sound of an old man rolling his neck between his shoulders. A dark shape hung inside. I couldn't tell what it was. "Uhhhhh, help me…" it groaned.

On the inside of the door were rusty nail tips sticking out quite jaggedly. They formed bizarre shapes and encircled an empty space in the middle of the door, which was devoid of nails. In this circular region of the door were deep hackings into the wood to carve out an image of a face with massive, bulging eyes that fixated directly on the viewer, with a sick, twisted smile. Mold grew in the cracks of the teeth on the face. Underneath the face was a sentence, similarly carved, that read "You will die alone."

"This isn't a pantry." I slammed the door closed, infuriated by the world's failure to provide me with exactly what I wanted instantly. While I had been looking for sustenance, you had abandoned the video game console and were looking at the pillow in the corner. You grabbed the small pillow in your fist and read the text stitched onto the front. "_I want to murder you_," you murmur quietly to yourself. "Hey, we can sleep on this."

"That's dumb," I jeered in response. "That's like smaller than a sofa pillow."

"How would you know? You don't have a sofa."

"My grandma did."

"No she didn't."

"Uh…yes she did. It was a porch sofa."

You bellowed with laughter. "That doesn't count! I lived on a sofa my whole life, you think you know more about what's a sofa than I do?"

"My grandma is never wrong," I said with firm conviction. "Never."

"What are you even talking about, you don't have a grandma," you claimed. "You have no one. There is no one. Only me." A little void opened up in the space to your left and you reached into it with your outstretched hand, pulling out a bottle of orange soda from within. You cracked it open and flopped down onto the pillow, the void floating down to join you at your side. You took a good long swig straight from your two liter bottle, wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, and sighed contentedly. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna take this pillow."

"Fine," I said. "I'll just take it when you're not looking."

"No you won't," you said and you pulled out your giant spinny, violently thrust your arm into the air, and then drove the spinny down with a mighty force in a perfectly straight line, thrusting one of its arrow-points through the pillow, fixing it into the ground. The spinny's tip was so thoroughly lodged that I speculated that from the ground floor below one could see a small metal point peering through the ceiling above.

"Fuck. I am never getting that out…ever. You ain't even gonna be able to use that yourself," I said.

"So? You can't use it. That's the point," you responded.

Then you reached into the portable void by your side and pulled out a small box of Cheez-Its. You then sat down on the floor next to your spinny and leaned your arm on it, used one of the tips to open the box, and started fishing out little orange squares one at a time and eating them while I stared.

"Are you gonna give me some of those. I've been hungry since I wasn't."

"No. It's a single serving. Look, see it says 'single serving' on the box." You indicated it with a flippant gesture that involved the middle finger protruding above all the other fingers.

We stood there in the room a really ass long time while I tried to think of something to do, but every time I thought of something I remembered that I was pissed at you and kept dwelling on it. As I was reciting the phrase 'I hate you' in my head, I was distracted by how quiet it was. Why did it seem quiet? Oh right, 'cause there was music before. I'd almost forgotten about it in the background of my hating you. Soon after the silence fell, it was broken again by a faint thumping. Someone was walking around downstairs.

My hunger was great enough that I immediately lost patience with you and tried to reach into the void so I could obtain my own box of Cheez-Its, but you grabbed my wrist and shoved it away. "Get your own void, asshole," you said. You reached back into the void and pulled out another identically sized box, and before you had even finished the first one you opened the second one and poured the entire contents into your mouth.

"Dude you have like, a thousand infinity of those! Just let me have some," I yelled as I watched you pull box after box of Cheez-Its out. You grinned at me and held up one of the little boxes, tapping at the text on the bottom.

"'Single serving'," was all you said.

I was slightly distracted again. There was a faint thumping that got louder and louder. The creak of someone walking up rotten stairs could be heard. Light footsteps worked in concert with the bumping of a large object being dragged along with them. For a second I thought I heard a melodious murmur or humming.

"Come on—you don't even have to pay for those and I already let you have the pillow," I pleaded.

"_Let_ _you_ have the pillow? Tell that to the spinny…"

That's it. I was so enraged I charged over to the small pillow which was thoroughly pierced by an impractically large ninja device. I grabbed one side of it and began to pull. You just stared at me and then started laughing. I heard a small rip. Apparently you did too because your jocular amusement was shattered by the morbid reality of a possibly ripped pillow—your only sleeping device.

"Stop," you said, half-commanding, half-pleading.

I kept yanking at the pillow.

"No really—stop" you yelled as you ran and grabbed the other side and started yanking that. "Stop yanking it, you're going to rip it!" you yelled again.

"You're yanking it too, you Hippo Critic!"

"Yeah, but I'm yanking it in the _right_ direction, which is towards _me. _You're yanking it in the _wrong _direction, which is at _you_!"

"Hey, do you hear that?" I said again. Through the door I could make out the lyrics to the melody I heard before.

"_Balloons and confetti, and maybe machete,_

_toys you can't buy in a store…"_

"All I hear is the sound of you ruining a good pillow. At this rate, it's not even gonna make a sentence anymore if you rip it completely in half," you said to me.

In one dramatic final blow, I grabbed the pillow so tightly within my fist that it sunk through my fingers, bulging white like layers of fat between my fingers. I pulled it as hard as I could and a giant seam tore straight up the middle. Then I flew backwards as the strings totally broke. Confetti burst forth from inside the pillow.

"Fuck. Now what?" I said. "What are we gonna do?"

"Fill it again," you said.

"With what?" I said, though I already saw you choosing the solution of pulling sequential boxes of Cheez-its from the void and filling it up.

"Hey, if you could pull Cheez-Its from the void, couldn't you just pull out feathers or a pillow or something?"

"Shut up."

"Hey, it's that song again. I think someone is singing right outside our door," I said. A deep, monotone, barely melodious voice sung.

"_Dollies with strings, wind up things,_

_party decorations galore…"_

"Hey, I know you want this void, but you can't have it. It's been passed down in my family for generations."

_BANG. HACK. HACK._

"Hey, I think someone is knocking at our door. Really forcefully."

The sound of an ax being driven into the door repeatedly could be heard. The gruff, deep landlord's voice continued to sing:

"_Duckies squeak and people scream,_

_trees get chopped and so do you…"_

"I think he wants the rent or something," you muttered. Confused and irritated, you yelled towards the door, hoping to call the landlord's attention. "We've been here for 5 minutes. Shouldn't rent be due next week?!"

The landlord did not answer. All we heard was the continued thudding noise of the door being struck. Within minutes a hole small enough to see through had been chipped away, and I saw the landlord's eye glaring at me with intense malevolent focus.

"So where were we? Oh yeah, I hate you," you said.

"Yeah, that's where you always at! Oh man, this is like the time where I was so fed up with you going to the waterpark that I refused to go anywhere with you unless it was a freaking desert and so you said, 'okay, we'll go to the desert, man. We cool. We cool. I just wanna hang out with you bro.' Then I said, 'no way—you'll take me to the only waterpark called _The Desert_.' And you swore and swore in the name of the deity Christ almighty lord god trinity priest, and I have no idea who that is but you swore to them anyway that it was not a waterpark that you were bringing me too and I believed you like the fool that I am! And there we were gettin' in your car of lies again and I even checked that shit thoroughly for floaties, water noodles, swimming trunks, coolers, bathing equipment, beach umbrellas, and anything that could ever possibly be found in the swimwear section of Wal-Mart—I even checked for chlorine tablets! I knew to check for chlorine 'cause of that time when you were like 'I swear I don't have any pool equipment in here' and it turned out that those thousands of Poland Spring bottles that you had in your car were for the creation of a spontaneous pool using the millions of chlorine tablets you had tied to the bottom of your car! And while you were driving I thought it was weird that you kept stopping the car every five minutes to look at something, but I didn't suspect a thing! Fool that I was! And then when we were taking that desert trip I remembered, I remembered so well and there were no chlorine tablets or anything! We were really gonna have a great day in the nice dry sun and I would finally see the stars, and then when we were finally in the middle of the desert, when my back was turned, I was blasted by water! I turned around and saw that you were holding a hose whose end stretched all the way out to the infinite sun bound horizon and I was like 'How far does that hose stretch?!' and you was like, 'all the way back to the faucet at your house!' and I was like oh my fucking god how did I not see the massive hose attached to the bottom of your car that unraveled as we drove down the highway? Turns out you had been saving up for 20 years to buy enough hoses, sewing them together one by one, so that they could reach all the way to the Sahara! You bastard! You tidal wave asshole!"

"Yeah."

Finally the ax struck the deathblow and the door split in half, revealing the heavyset man that was our landlord. The sweat pouring down his face from the effort of destroying the door had smeared his clown makeup so that it dripped down his face and pooled around his shoulders in a mess of white and red. Rainbow streamers were draped around his flabby arms, the tops of which, in addition to the strap of his white tank top, were stained with his stray make-up. His shirt was also stained in yellow splotches by previous episodes of extreme sweatiness. Strings tied to his ears stretched straight upward, perpendicular to his horizontal tufts of hair, ending in festive helium balloons floating a foot or two above his head. The ax head rested upon the floor, the handle gripped by his hands like a cane. He stared at us intently, his immobile will burning in his eyes. In a gruff voice he released the last lines of his song from his frowning maw.

"_Ivan loves to party, _

_so let us get started,_

_I am coming to murder you."_

As the landlord approached us slowly, dragging his ax behind him, I looked at you curiously. In my peripheral vision I could see him hoisting the weapon over his head.

"Hey Axel," I said. You looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

"He's got an _Ax_," I said. "Heh, heh."

He lifted the blade, and swung it with all of his strength toward my forehead.


	5. The Line Forest

Chapter 5 – The Line Forest

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

I had that dream again.

I began to awaken. I had a terrible headache, but I didn't know why. Maybe it was because my bed was harder than usual. Wait…that makes no sense. A faint, pale green light filled the sky and leaked in through my eyelids as I awoke to see an endless, cloudless, starless sky above my head. "I don't remember having a sun roof," I thought to myself. I realized that for some reason I was lying on the ground outside. I felt a cold, hard surface beneath me. I looked down to see a deep, depressing gray ground. I couldn't quite tell what material it was made out of. Was it some type of soil? It wasn't anything man made. It was completely hard and completely flat. I punched it. My fist connected with the ground and stayed there, making no sound upon impact. It didn't even hurt; I didn't feel anything. The air was a silent as the ground was featureless. I sat all the way up and looked around, trying to interpret my surroundings.

Evenly spaced in alternating rows all the way out to the horizon was a series of systematically placed, geometrically precise, solid rectangles, longer than they are wide. They were about the width and height of a small tree, but instead of a living organism, they were long, flat, unvariegated and unvarying in form, cold and eerie as a cast iron fence but completely devoid of design or function. They stretched as far as my eyes could see in every direction and beyond my peripheral vision, and yet they were all an identical, finite size. Their exactitude and uniformity was beyond mathematical imagination.

"Holy shit," I said, my voice echoing out into the endless void that I seemed to have found myself in. "What the fuck."

Scanning the horizon again, I came to the conclusions that there was nothing there except me and these incomprehensible shapes. "Oh man," I said to myself. "I'm finally alone." You weren't there. I stood there and gazed out. No sounds. No movement. No life. "Thank god." For a brief second I was at peace.

Pop. Like the sudden and unwanted presence of a jack-in-the-box after a pleasant melody, you materialized instantly and wholly right in front of me.

"Fuck," you said, looking at the world around you. "This is some wack ass shit." You walked up to one of the protruding lines, stared at it for a bit, made an angry expression, and punched it. A dead silence. You stood there with your arm extended outwards, fist touching the line for a good minute and a half. Then you lowered it, walked towards me and punched me in the head.

"What was that for, man?!" I screamed.

"I didn't get the satisfaction I expected from punching that line," you explained. "Hey," you said, "You didn't even blink when I did that. Your head's not even bruised. Did that even hurt?"

"Come to think of it…no" I said.

"Hey man," you said, "you're still not blinking. In fact, I don't think I saw you blink in the last like 10 minutes. It's fucking freaking me out. Why you not blinking?"

"Uh…I just don't really feel like it," I said.

"Does that explain why you're not fuckin' breathing either?"

"Yeah."

You looked around, presumably attempting to comprehend your surroundings, no doubt contemplating the purpose to which we were brought to this strange landscape. Your eyebrows furrowed and you felt around on the ground for a moment or two before moving towards one of the lines and looking closely at the base where it connects to the ground. "Where's the outlet," you said. "Come on, let's go look for an outlet."

"What you even want one for, you don't have any plugs with you," I said.

"I wanna play Xbox."

"You still don't have nothing to plug into anything," I said.

"Whatever, I'll find one." Without consulting me any further you strolled away into what I can only describe as the forest of lines, passing through the spaces between them rapidly despite there not being a straight line for you to walk in between them. I followed. It seemed like we had walked for a very long time, yet it seemed like we had gone nowhere. The lines had a hypnotizing appearance as we walked and all of them, from the very closest one to the one on the far reaches of the horizon, seemed to stay the same distance away from us. Nothing changed. I stopped and you got farther away from me. The distance between us increased. I ran to catch up to you, but still the lines were all in place. The light in the sky hadn't changed either.

"Hey, are we moving?" I asked you.

"What are you fucking stupid? You're moving your feet, of course you're moving," you said.

We wandered like that for what seemed to be hours, but since nothing changed, I couldn't tell how much time had passed at all. I relied only on the vague feeling inside me, which I began to doubt more and more. We moved forward, we moved to the left, and we moved to the right. Still the scene was identical.

In the distance I heard a faint sound, the first one besides your voice I had heard since my own voice. When I could not even hear my own footsteps below me, something was making a rumbling noise beyond my field of vision. I couldn't tell what it was.

"Do you hear something?" I asked you, hoping to confirm that what I was experiencing was not solely my mind's invention. You looked down at me with a look of such unimaginable scorn that I recoiled under your gaze.

"Yeah, I hear something, and it's a foot shorter than me and it needs to shut the fuck up," you said.

"…What?"

"YOU. _YOU_. …IT'S YOU."

"Hey, I may be shorter, but at least I'm in proportion, unlike you with your lady hips and really elongated waist. It looks like you were made out of rubber in a factory and they hung you in the air when you weren't completely dry yet and then you started dripping slowly down."

"Wow…I would be offended if I thought that meant anything."

And once again I lost a battle of wits. To an idiot.

Again I heard the rumbling. Even you admitted it. "Hey, what's that noise? You hear that?"

"You mean that noise that I heard a while ago that you denied the existence of?"

"No I mean the noise that I heard that you failed to hear."

"I heard it first. It's a bus."

"Shut up. It's my noise. I heard it first."

"You can't possess sound waves—they move."

"Don't assume that everyone else has your difficulties. Stop using the psychological strategy of similarizing everyone to your level in order to feel normal."

"Similarizing? I don't think that's a word."

"Yes it is."

"No…it's not."

"Yo, you think there are fucking dictionaries here? There isn't anything here. But if you insist…"

You pulled a sharpie out of your pocket and wrote something on your hand.

"Here. First dictionary." You lifted your middle finger to me to demonstrate that you had written "similarizing" on your skin along with a pronunciation guide.

"It's not a dictionary if you don't include a definition," I stated. You quickly pulled the sharpie out and inscribed something on your other middle finger. "To similarize," I read as you lifted both middle fingers to me simultaneously.

The sound got louder. "Hey, I hear my sound again," you said to deliberately antagonize me.

"Really? If that's your noise, then what's its name?"

"Jeremy," you said with unanticipated immediacy.

"Fuck….prove that."

Just as those words emerged a bus drove up next to us and stopped. The windows were blacked out so that we couldn't see inside. The bus was painted red with strange MTV metal band drawings of googly-eyed cartoon demons having a party in extremely saturated colors. Huge multi-colored flames were painted as the background with images of people receiving torments. I figured it must be some band tour. The door pulled open and a voice said, "Sorry about Jeremy. Here's been really loud lately."

"In your face! Again—defeated," you said. You claimed victory by literally thrusting both middle fingers into my face and then walked straight onto the bus.

"Dude, don't go in there. You don't even know where it's going," I said, concerned.

"Oh, no…no. I know where it's going. Away from you."

"Why do you hate me so much!?" I screamed.

"Geez, that's a really loaded question!" the bus driver yelled. "You don't just say that to people."

"Yeah," you said as you traced your finger down your face in the imaginary path of a tear.

I debated with myself for a little while if I should get on this bus with you or just turn around and walk into the eternal oblivion of lines. The choice was difficult. But eventually I decided to get on the bus because it was air conditioned. You sat down in the priority seating section, despite the fact that the entire bus was empty.

"Those are for the disabled," I said.

"Yeah, you're right," you said and stood up. "Here you go."

"That was in really poor taste," I said.

"Yeah, you're right, this is priority seating, I shouldn't have offered it to anyone else but me," you said as you sat back down, now lifting your legs up so that they took up all the seats with priority seating labels.

I sat on your legs.

"I know you think that's gonna make me move them, but you ain't gonna win this, man," you said, not even budging.

"Everyone remain seated," the driver announced. "This is a one way trip. Destination arrival time is in 2 hours."

"What time is it now?" I asked.

"Twilight," the driver responded. He had an unusually base and gruff voice despite being fairly polite, though laconic and rather bored sounding. Then I noticed that his hat was in a strange shape. It didn't quite fit on his head properly. Upon closer examination I noticed a pair of horns poking out from the sides of the hat. It was then that I noticed that his skin was a particular bright shade of green and that he was driving with his tail, which was long and prehensile and forked at the end. With his hands he occupied himself with a game of Tetris while driving.

"Please stop staring at me," he said awkwardly. "It's really making me uncomfortable."

"How did you know I was staring at you?" I said.

"I'm a demon. I know everything."

"Oh."

Suddenly I heard this muffled sound of screaming behind glass. I could barely make the words out. It sounded something like, "stop…wait….please…I don't wanna be alone….where am I…it's meaningless, all meaningless here…where are you God?!…"

I turned around to look out of the back window and saw a man running as fast as he could, clutching his hands together as if begging.

"Hey I think that guy is trying to get on the bus," I said to the driver.

"I know. Didn't I just tell you I know everything?" he said. He began to slow the bus down.

"THANK YOU SO MUCH! THANK YOU!" the man screamed as he began to slow down and reach for the door to ascend the steps on the bus. The bus, however, continued moving at the exact same pace that the man was running at. His face began to look confused. He ran a little bit faster to catch up to the door. The bus sped up to match his new speed. The man ran even faster, now just as fast as before. The bus sped up even faster. The man finally stopped running and fell on his knees crying into his palms. The bus stopped completely. "THANK GOD!" the man shouted. But as soon as he reached the doors the bus started moving again, repeating the process.

"This is funny," the driver said.

Finally, as the man was screaming continuously into his palms, the doors opened and the driver said, "get on."

The man tentatively approached the bus.

"Ticket please?" the driver asked.

"What?" The man said, dirt all over his clothes and his eyes tearing with desperation. "Can I just buy one now?!"

"No," said the driver. "They're not for sale."

"What do you mean?!" he screamed.

I began to say: "Hey, we got on and we didn't have—" but you put your hand in front of my face. It still smelled like Cheez-Its.

"The trick to life man, is to pretend that you own everything" you said, and popped a soda and started drinking it.

"Where did that come from?" I asked.

"I already had it. Because I own everything."

"Holy fucking shit, you are such an asshole about everything. This reminds me of the time when we were playing Roller Coaster Tycoon and I had spent hours and hours of dedicated gameplay making the perfect amusement park and I had a 100% rating and like thirteen pretzel stands and when I got up to go to the bathroom for two minutes you swooped in and changed everything, like you not only deleted all of the bathrooms and garbage cans so the guests were really unhappy, but you replaced all the amusements with the same one water ride in every space. You even named the park "Axel is Awesome" and renamed like half the guests "Axel 1" and "Axel 2" and you named the rest of them "Roxas" and systematically drowned all of them and took screenshots and changed my background to a picture of all of my guests dying and my park getting a negative rating, like I don't know how the fuck you managed to do all of that in two minutes but when I got back my keyboard was totally coated in Cheez-It dust or some fucking shit and I told you 'you better clean that up' and you said 'okay' and you just opened a bottle of Mountain Dew and poured the whole thing over my keyboard and I could never turn the computer off again."

"It's probably still on now," you replied. "Everybody else must be dead by now, I put something in front of the gate so they can't leave." You laughed.

Just then the man clutched the bus driver's jacket, crying into it loudly. The bus driver sighed, exasperated.

"Alright, you can go on the bus," the driver said. "But you can never get off…until the last stop."

"Where is that?" asked the man.

The bus driver closed the door.

"Hell."


	6. Hello, My Name is The Devil

Chapter 6 (66) – Hello, My Name is The Devil

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

I awoke to cold dirty water dripping on my face. It trickled down my eyelids and I swatted it away. I looked up to see that it was leaking from a broken bus air conditioner above my head. "What the hell? This wasn't leaking on me before? Why do things change?"

"Hey man you finally awake?" you said from your seat across the aisle. "I accidentally broke the air conditioner. For some reason it kept getting hotter and hotter and I kept having to turn it up more and more. Then it went to the last setting, but it wasn't good enough so I tried to turn it more and then it just broke."

"Man, if you were just satisfied with it and left it at the super high setting instead of denying reality by spinning past the clearly marked red line that represents the limit, then this wouldn't have happened. Instead we've gotta sit here and get like really sweaty."

"Wait, we're not sweating," you observed.

"Whatever it's really hot. Plus, sweat's that kind of thing that just sneaks up on you. You don't feel it."

"Well if I only had my spinnies then I could have made my own fan, but noooo. We can't have nice things because of you. When we moved out of the house you literally brought NOTHING. You made me throw out literally everything we owned. You didn't even let me bring my void with me. It takes up nooo space because it's a void!"

"Wait, I don't think we moved out. I don't think that's how it went."

"Yeah it is. Everything I own is still in the shitty apartment. That guy with the clown stuff is probably still in there breaking all my shit with his ax."

I thought about the situation you described for a moment. "Hehe. Ax. Axel. Ax. Get it?"

Though my witty pun to me represented the height of hilarity, you were unimpressed. "Dipshit," you said.

"Hey, I'm ax-ing you a question!"

"Well, I'm gonna kick you in the ax if you don't shut the fuck up. Like. Right now."

Before I could appreciate you finally participating, the bus driver made an announcement on the intercom. Luckily we were sitting near the front of the bus so despite the intercom being static-y and completely ineffectual we could hear what he was saying. "Last stop, everybody off," he said. The bus pulled to a stop and the doors slowly swung open. You made no move to get up, instead you just sank further into your seat and sniffed loudly. A weird creaking sound that was audible in all other parts of the bus, you know that squeak that comes out of your face when you're congested that's like for no reason that just goes creeeeeeak and like pops and stuff and everybody in the room knows it's happening but most people don't say anything cause they're too polite? It must have lasted for like ten seconds, but you thought it was cool so you did it again.

"What in the hell is that?" the demon asked.

"I thought you knew everything 'cause you're a demon," you taunted.

The demon wasn't happy with that smart ass answer. He turned around to face you and pointed violently at the window. "You see what's going on outside? You see those flames and screaming people? That's about to be you. Now get off my fuckin' bus."

You looked out of the window as if you hadn't done so at all throughout the entire two hour ride. "Oh shit, there's demons and shit."

"Yeah, it ain't that funny now, is it?" The bus driver mocked you as he walked to the back of the bus to where the only other passenger was hidden. He was curled up in a ball underneath one of the blue benches, shaking and crying and trying to be as quiet as possible. The demon went up to him and leaned over to look at him. "I said before, you gotta get off the bus. Don't be inconsiderate, other people gotta ride the bus besides you."

"How did you know I was here?" the man wailed.

"None of you are listening. I'm a demon, I know everything."

"No," you said.

The demon was even a little surprised. "Wow, even though I know everything, you are so stupid that it actually surprises me," the demon said. He took off his bus driver's cap, which indicated how mad he was. When people take their hats off it means they are really mad.

"You don't know how to do _this_," you said to the demon as you sniffed deeply so that your nasal passage made another creaking noise.

"Wow that is not impressive. I hope you thought doing that was worth going to a deeper level of Hell, 'cause you was only gonna' go to the place where regular dead people go, but now you're going to go to the super torture chamber level."

"Fuck that. I don't give a shit," you said as you stuck your middle finger up to the demon.

"Wow, just fucking wow. Now you're going even further."

You stuck up your second middle finger.

"Uhhp. That's the next level down now."

In the background I could observe the terrified anonymous passenger crawling along the floor to sneak out. I did absolutely nothing during all of this. I thought about trying to stop you, but then I was like…nah. Then I wondered if they had Xbox in Hell. Oh, no, they probably only have bad games cause this is Hell, like thinking games like Spyro the Dragon.

You started winding your arms in windmill fashion with your middle fingers still protruding. You started to say almost melodiously, "fuck the law. Fuck the law and then fuck the law."

"Wow, pssh ugh wooooooow," the demon said, so angry that he didn't even know what to do. "I am SO impressed by your attitude. I hope you enjoy it this much when you're in the super duper _duper_ lower level."

"Fuck that bullshit."

"Oh no, it's not bullshit. It's pretty real. It's about as real as the screaming outside that window."

"Tell me, is this a law? Tell me if this is a law. Is this a law?"

"Yeah pretty much."

"Then fuck it. Cause I'm Axel and I fuck the law."

"No, the law's gonna' fuck you right now all the way down to the next level of Hell. I'm gonna' have to make a new level of Hell for you at this rate."

"Fuck the law."

"Next level down."

"Fuck the law."

"Next level down."

"Fuck the law."

"Next level down."

For the first time in a long time I almost smiled, because you were getting what you finally deserved. Your stupidity was finally going to have consequences. It would be awesome to see you actually distressed for once.

The normally deadpan demon finally screamed, "alright, YOU and your BFF over there are going to the lowest level of Hell possible. If you have any complaint, you're gonna' speak right to the devil! I'm not paid to deal with this!"

The demon shot a lightning bolt at us, which knocked us off the bus, and he drove away angrily. I looked at you and realized that you were now just responsible for condemning me to an eternity of torment in the lowest level of Hell, and to add icing to the watercake you would be the only one there with me. I was so angry that I felt nothing. I was totally devoid. I just stared at you. Yep.

I saw the man from the bus standing on the street, on fire. He was running around trying multiple doors that didn't open, searching for an exit. "He he he" a short man with black slicked back hair, a wandering eye, and a cigar, sat on a perch watching him, chuckled, and said, "there is no exit."

"This is really absurd." I said.

"Hey, this is just like a video game!" you shouted. "Look at that dumb fuck," you said as you pointed to a man screaming in agony. I ignored you.

"This is bullshit!" you yelled. "I'm gonna' go talk to Satan. Where is he?" I looked around. Extremely confusing and contradictory signs were on the wall. The kind that come out of posts and point in certain directions were plastered everywhere. I saw a sign pointed left that said "to Satan's office" right next to a sign that pointed right that said "to Satan's office (if you walk long enough)." Signs hung from cords that went up forever into the infinitely high ceiling. Although they pointed in specific directions, they rotated as things on strings do.

"Eh, it's probably over there," you said pointing to an oak door with a flashy metal plaque that said "Satan, CEO" in a corporate font. For some reason there were barnacles surrounding the door frame and a decorative anchor under the plaque. A faint jaunty sea shanty could be heard. You opened the door first without bothering to knock. Satan dressed in sea captain's attire bounded jubilantly around an expensive mahogany desk, swinging his arms and singing this:

"A sailors life is the life for me

Diddly woah dee dee in the boundless sea

And I never ever ever give a damn about the weather

'cause the weather never happens down here anyway"

"Excuse me?" I said.

Satan stopped in his tracks and just stared. "Oh, a jolly hello to you!" He spoke in a somewhat loud voice, but not in a shouting kinda' way, but in a really outgoing guy kinda' way, and I knew he was going to crush my hand in a handshake. "Ah, come right in!" So we like did. He extended his hand out which was red, like the rest of his skin. He looked like a decently attractive seafaring man except that his skin was blood red and he had black horns on his head which sat promptly on either side of a naval officer's hat.

"How did you find my office?" He asked, gesturing for us to sit in two chairs that I don't quite remember being there before in front of his desk. He was one of those kind of people that makes you just like them 'cause they appear to really like you and they are so damn comfortable with everything.

"What's CEO stand for on your door? Do you run a company?" you asked bluntly with no finesse.

Satan responded to your awkward rudeness and unnecessary question with a warm laugh that indicated he was at ease nonetheless. "You could say that," he said. He smiled. "It stands for Central Evil Overlord. The acronym is just a coincidence" he explained with a wave of his hand as he reached for a cigar and lit it by snapping his fingers under it to make a flame. "Cuba, 1947," he said. He drew in a long relaxing puff and slumped a bit in his chair, but was still attentive.

"So what brings you to my office?" he asked.

I looked around the room. It was a bizarre conglomerate of anachronistic material assembled from all over the world. The original writings of Lao Tzu lay next to the latest edition of Cosmopolitan. A Victorian watch was on the wrist of an ancient Egyptian ka statue as well as 3D disposable movie glasses. His movie collection ranged from Mission Impossible to a scientology introductory video to a national geographic documentary to wartime propaganda from the Soviet Union. On his wall were various mounted fish, a mammoth head, fossilized starfish, and seaweed hanging from the ceiling. There were layers of sand on the floor. Seafaring memorabilia were scattered throughout the room, including tacky statues of fisherman, harpoons, and refrigerator magnets with naval puns. The walls were lined all around with naval stars and the front side of his mahogany desk had a steering wheel attached to it. Ships in bottles sat atop every book shelf in the room. The clock struck the next hour and it made the sound of a boat.

He gave out a hearty laugh, slapped his knee and said "oh that makes me laugh every time!"

"Care for some bourbon to wet your whistle?" he chirped. A bottle of bourbon suddenly appeared on his desk without question next to some little glasses. Somewhere back on Earth, someone said "hey, where's my bourbon?"

"So what can I do you for?" Satan wondered.

"How many DAMN introductions are you gonna' give?!" you yelled impatiently.

"Wow, no respect for authority, no understanding of the intensity of the situation, constantly angry. You remind me of me when I was young!" Satan said reminiscently.

"Let me start off by introducing myself. I'm the devil. And you are in Hell."


End file.
